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Can a few thousand workers and settlers reverse the region’s devastating population loss?
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Premier Fico threatens lawsuit at European Court of Justice over mandatory quota scheme.
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Belarusian border town has become main transit point for those on their way to Europe, who say they fear increased oppression back home.
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Studies in large cities revealed that indoor air pollution concentrations are at such levels where it can cause serious health impacts. The main source of the release of substances in the environment is the emission of gases (produced during the combustion process) such as carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, sulphur oxides, nitrogen oxides, ammonia and others. In this study the assessment of indoor air quality in 26 places in Prishtina city were investigated and the main objective of this study was monitoring of the air quality through the determination of gases concentration of C02, C0, N0x and S02. Also the ratio of CO2/CO2+CO was calculated. Concentrations of CO2, CO, SO2 and NOx were determined using “Dräger” instrument, model “X-am 7000 digital gas monitor”. Environmental risk assessment of air quality was done by comparing the obtained results with air WHO standards. During that period were found a permanent presence of some toxic gases in high concentrations in indoor areas. Results show that CO2 levels were ranged 300-4000 ppmv. The concentration of CO was ranged 0.6-17 ppmv and was reported to be under limits value in all locations. Also concentrations of SO2 and NOx (except air sample S6) were reported to be under WHO air limits value. According to gases concentration, many locations show values characteristic for highly and extremely contaminated indoor places.
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This study focuses on the rationality of the migrants’ behaviour. We hypothesise that the migration growth rate depends on the territory attractiveness for living. The rational behaviour is defined as the direct dependence of the migrations on the characteristics of the territory attractiveness. The irrational behaviour means that the reverse dependence is present. The direct dependence is recognised if the level of the migrants’ positive reactions to the factors of the territory attractiveness is no less than 30 % from the maximum. 83 subjects of the Russian Federation were clustered based on 12 objective characteristics of the life’s quality. We distinguished the largest Middle Cluster, which includes 56 regions. Further we transformed the panel data for the period from 2005 to 2015 into the array of the coefficients of correlations between the characteristics of the territory attractiveness and the migration growth rates in the regions. Using these characteristics, the regions were clustered again. The regional types of the Middle cluster with the rational and irrational behaviours include 22 regions each. The level of the migrants’ positive reactions to the factors of the territory attractiveness is 44.1 % for the first (rational) regional type and 42.5 % for the second (irrational) type. The regional type with the indifferent behaviour includes 12 regions. The level of the migrants’ reactions to the characteristics of these territory attractiveness is just 5.8 %. Based on the regression models of the migration coefficient for each cluster type, we have provided recommendations for managing the migration flows using the differential approach.
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While villages have the problem of migrations, Cacak, as the centre of the municipality, has completely different problems concerning the demographic development. Primarily, there is a great influx of people who should be provided with optimal conditions for life, such as: education, health care, employment, flats, entertainment recreation and other. If this influx continues, and now more than 62% of the local population is concentrated in the town, it will cause great problems to Cacak as the centre of the municipality. On the basis of the surveys and authors’ research, the problems of the demographic development of Cacak municipality in the last four decades of the 20th century and at the beginning of the new millennium have been shown. We have given the fluctuations in the number of people and households in 58 settlements of Cacak municipality in the period from 1948. to 2002. Then, we have shown the natural movement of the local population through the birth rate, death rate and population growth rate, which has been negative in the last decade and a half. Finally, sexual, age, ethnical, educational and economic structures of the population have been analysed.
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Geographical studies on the development represent a proposal for a integration of some of research topics undertaken by both physical and human geography. Their aim is to analyze the social and economic processes through the prism of natural conditions and their position in particular spaces. Such an assumption makes that the main object of the researchers are the relationships and spatial phenomena of development and underdevelopment. The concept of geography of development was introduced to geography by Jürgen Blenck in 1979. In the center of the geographical studies on development Blenck puts society that occupying a defined space of the specific conditions of the natural environment are creating a network of relations that will either lead to the development or inhibit this process.
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The study presents the results of research of accessibility to urban parks, as an important destinationfor residents of urban areas. The analyzes were carried out with the use of the example of Gdansk,where the location of the urban parks has had a long tradition. Urban parks play an important role in everydaylife due to their functions, with the recreational role recognized as particularly vital in urban areas. Shapingthe development of residential areas in cities should involve good accessibility to urban parks. The articleshows the possibility of applying GIS techniques in studies of accessibility to the urban parks in Gdansk. Itshould be an important tool in shaping development policy planning, especially in residential areas.
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Książka "Bezdomność w Łodzi" jest w przeważającej mierze efektem konferencji pod tym samym tytułem, która odbyła się w tymże mieście w lutym 2016 roku za sprawą Łódzkiego Partnerstwa Pomocy w sytuacji Wykluczenia i Bezdomności. Składają się na nią teksty prezentowane podczas konferencji oraz kilka innych. Dobrze się stało, że książka nie odcina się od tego spotkania, jak to nieraz bywa z "tomami pokonferencyjnymi". Owszem, w różnoraki sposób do niej nawiązuje. We wstępie jest zamieszczony program konferencji, są też zdjęcia z obrad. W ten sposób redaktorkom publikacji udało się zachować coś z dialogu, który się toczył przecież tamtej zimy na Uniwersytecie Łódzkim. [...] Przedstawiony materiał [...] o bezdomności w Łodzi jest bardzo wartościowy. [z recenzji dr hab. Grzegorza Pełczyńskiego, prof. Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego]
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The article is an attempt to return at the human being .after the cyborg, originating in the need to overcome the posthumanist impasse of some of the trends of contemporary cultural theory. The author is not trying to fix the identity of human/non-human animal in all of its bio-digital configurations, but rather discuss to what extent the transformed understanding of human being can not only help us think better about ourselves and other who can but do not have to be like us, as well as live better with others: machines, people, non-human animals. This research is equally interested in the pragmatics of how and in the character of the we.
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No abstract available. This is a book review.
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The article deals with Chełmszczyzna, the borderland region rarely discussed in the framework of the Polish studies on the borderlands. The author considers different kinds of writing: literary works, memoirs, reportages as well as academic historical studies; majority of which comes from the turn of the 19th century. Assuming the semiotic and postcolonial perspective, he poses several questions as to who are the inhabitants of this region for their authors people from faraway cultural centres? To what extent do they personify national ideologies, political and religious discourses which by granting identity, ultimately identify the other?
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First Muslims arrived to the island Krk during sixties in the twentieth century. Their arrival on the island was primarily associated with the need for searching jobs and better quality of life in Croatia compared to Bosnia and Hercegovina. In a similar way, Muslims from Bosnia and Herzegovina arrived in the Labin area, where they worked in the mines. They also settled in the area of Istrian town Pula, where they were employed in the Uljanik shipyard, and in Rijeka, where they worked in the shipyard 3rd May. In Buzet they were employed in various construction companies, which was also the case in some other parts of Croatia (Dubrovnik, Zagreb, Gunja and Kordun area) which are not studied in this paper. Their number has, during a period of a little more than twenty years (between 1948 and 1971), increased in the entire Croatia for few hundred times. In 1971 there exsisted only one single person who declared as a Muslim in the whole commune of Buzet, and that number rose to 12 persons in 1981, and in 1991 to 108 persons. In the island of Krk area in 1991, there were only 272 Muslims. In the new environment Muslims were not discriminated, and they entered into mixed marriages. The arrival of democratic movement changed the relationship of the majority (Croats) towards Muslims (which after 1993 became Bosniaks). Discrimination, problems with obtaining citizenship, employment dismissal based on ethnicity and religion are just some of the problems that occur in relations between Bosniaks and the majority population in Croatia during the 1990s war. In spite of following circumstances the Bosniaks participated in large numbers in the Croatian defense. In the after war period, the author concludes that Bosniaks on the Krk island and in Buzet became well organized in the political, religious and cultural spheres.
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Poles have started to migrate at the area of Croatia by the end of the 19th century. The first major settlements of the Poles were undertaken on the territory of Slavonski Brod and Nova Gradiska. In the first half of the 20th century were founded some Polish societies and associations in Croatian cities. At that time, the first Polish tourists came to the Adriatic Resort. After the Second World War, the Polish rural population from Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina returned to Poland. Since 1948, relations between Yugoslavia and Poland have worsened, and in the late 1970s, the relationship between the two countries re-dissolved. At that time, the first immigrants from Poland came to Yugoslavia. They were women who founded marriages with Yugoslav citizens and who moved mainly to big cities in Yugoslavia. The »emigration of the heart« between the Poles and the Yugoslavs was not the only such thing in Yugoslavia. Almost identical to that model was the »emigration of the heart« between the Russians and the Yugoslavs. Russians and Poles were almost always highly educated persons, and secession to Yugoslavia was conditioned by the poor economic status of the USSR and Poland at the time before the fall of the Berlin Wall, or traditional male-female relations. The changes were followed in time since 2004 when Poland became a member of the European Union, and before that year since the late nineties, when Poland began to develop strongly in the industrial, tourism and economically developed European country. Then the Poles were no longer observed as the poor northeastern neighbors of Yugoslavia, but have become a desirable economic partner. In Croatia / Yugoslavia, the Polish women mostly managed to find employment, learned language, managed to gain Croatian citizenship, but succeeded in maintaining a national identity. National identity has been preserved and preserved by six associations in Croatia currently operating in five places (two in Zagreb and one in Osijek, Rijeka, Kaštela and Zadar). Love to the native land also passed on to their children who mostly know the Polish language, and some of them attend the Polish school. The opportunities for cooperation between the two countries have increased since Croatia entered the European Union in 2013. Then, as it was the case, at least partially, a hundred years ago (Austria-Hungary), Croatia and Poland found themselves in one common ground. The close co-operation between the two countries is certainly beneficial to the fact that there is a Polish diaspora in Croatia, which among other members also makes Polish women married to Croatian citizens.
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The aim of this paper is to investigate those buildings left over from Warsaw's socialist past as a part of the city's brand visual identity including their perception by foreign tourists and local citizens. Although Lisiak (2009) examined the destruction, removal and presence of these remnants from the socialist past in Central European cities, a comparative study of the perception of these architectural sites erected in Warsaw during socialist times has not been carried out specifically so far. To fill the gap, the authors concentrated research efforts on the following buildings: Palace of Culture and Science; the SMYK Store at Bracka 15/19; Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development at Wspólna 30; Office Building and Atrium at Wspólna 62; and the former headquarters of the Polish Communist Party at Nowy Świat 6/12. These buildings were built after the Second World War between the late 1940s and the first half of the 1950s. With the exception of the Palace of Culture and Science - which is one of the most notable symbols of Warsaw - these architectural sites are not on a priority list of the average tourist who does little or no planning for their trip. Nevertheless, these buildings are connected to the Polish People's Republic era and might attract different groups interested in this historical period and architecture. Apart from being potential tourist attractions, these buildings are being re-evaluated and restored to become integrated into the urban environment and more 'comfortable' for the local inhabitants. This paper gives some insights into the recognition and attractiveness of these architectural sites from the socialist past by those from Russia and the USA who have visited Warsaw as well as by Poles who know this city well. It is recommended that these results be taken into consideration by tourist agencies who deal with tours in Warsaw as well as institutions responsible for the city's image. The authors express the hope that this paper might be of interest for officials with public relations duties related to these architectural sites.
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The article is dedicated to the travel notes on Bulgaria, Down the Donkey’s Path.Bulgarian Mosaic, written in 1978 in East Germany by the East German writer Kurt Bizalski and republished in 2001 in united Germany without any changes, explanations or supplements. Bizalski based the book on his experience in Bulgaria in 1977 when he paid an official visit at the invitation of the Union of the Bulgarian Writers.However, the Embassy of People’s Republic of Bulgaria in Berlin criticizes the travel notes, stigmatizes the author and recommends not to translate the book into Bulgarian.The Committee for State Security accuses the work in distorting the socialist reality and prevents its distribution in Bulgaria. This article presents Down the Donkey’s Path as a mobile book – restricted but not everywhere, prohibited but not completely,occupying the extra-national art space extended across the political borders within the socialist bloc from the 1970s and the 1980s. Analysing the author of travel notes as an anthropologist, Bulgaria as a field of research and the Bulgarian readers as a local critical public allows us to look at the problem of the relation between anthropology, literature and political censorship from another angle.
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This study contains a post-adhering to European Union diagnosis of housing conditions. Statistics provided by the European Union Statistics Network, Eurostat, highlight the precariousness of housing quality, the main element of the quality of life. Statistical analysis of main housing quality indicators in the post-adhering period when our country gained the status of EU member indicate major differences between highly developed states and new Member States of this European structure, with particular problems in terms of standards development and thus quality of life.
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The condition of the environment is one of the most fundamental concerns of cities worldwide, especially when high levels of pollution and environmental destruction exert immense impact on people’s quality of life. This paper focuses on Skopje, the capital of Macedonia, which often tops the charts as the world’s most polluted city. Despite associated problems such as congestion, ill health, and premature death, Macedonia’s scarce resources are instead spent on controversial projects, such as ‘Skopje 2014’, involving creating a national identity through massive and extremely costly constructions of neo-classical government buildings, museums and monuments. The aim of this paper is to compare the situation of Skopje to environmentally oriented activities conducted in several Polish cities and to discuss the possibility of their implementation in Skopje. Considering the scale and scope of Skopje’s environmental problems, the paper offers some priorities for action, including solutions that emphasize institution building, technical input and self-governance. It also highlights a number of economic, ecological, and socio-cultural contradictions involved in the process of achieving sustainable development.
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